Hedge fund manager Pierre Andurand has returned almost 15 per cent this year by betting on a recovery in oil prices and he forecasts the rally has further to run after Opec’s agreement last week to cut supplies. The French founder of Andurand Capital, which has grown to be one of the world’s largest oil funds, returned 6.1 per cent in November as he positioned for crude’s […]
By Crispian Balmer | ROME ROME When former Italian president Giorgio Napolitano tapped Matteo Renzi as prime minister in February 2014, he urged his younger colleague to change the constitution in order to make it easier to govern Italy. Early this year, Napolitano fretted that Renzi was taking the wrong approach in doing so. A referendum on the constitutional changes had been called. But instead of focusing […]
By Angus McDowall , John Davison and Stephanie Nebehay | BEIRUT/GENEVA BEIRUT/GENEVA Syria’s army and allies closed in on areas near Aleppo’s Old City on Tuesday, looking closer than ever to achieving their most important victory of the five year civil war by driving rebels out of their last urban stronghold. Rebels said on Tuesday they would never abandon Aleppo, after reports that U.S. and Russian diplomats […]
Solar panels, which convert sunlight into electricity, are a key player in the fast-growing renewable energy sector, which also includes water- and wind-generated electricity The climate-friendly electricity generated by solar panels in the past 40 years has all but cancelled out the polluting energy used to produce them, a study said Tuesday. Indeed, by some calculations, the so-called “break-even point” between dirty energy input and clean output […]
DUBAI // Justin Bieber will perform in Dubai in May next year, his website says. The Canadian singer is scheduled to perform at Autism Rocks Arena in Dubai on May 6, according to his website. The performance is part of his Purpose World Tour, which kicks off on Friday in New York. Other tour dates include shows in Mexico, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, Italy, France and Canada. Purpose […]
By Costas Pitas | LONDON LONDON When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Britain last year and went for a drink with then Prime Minister David Cameron, he walked away with a smile on his face. Now China has walked away with the pub. “The Plough at Cadsden” in the heart of the English countryside will go down as one of the more unusual UK buys for Chinese […]
06 December 2016 Saxo Bank, the online multi-asset trading and investment specialist, today announces that it is launching a combination order ticket for all clients trading contract options. The combination order ticket will enable clients to deploy multi-legged option strategies by simultaneously placing orders to buy and/or sell different options from the same order ticket. Georgio Stoev, Futures and Listed Options Product Manager, said: “Instead of trading […]
By Ahmed Rasheed and Patrick Markey | BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq BAGHDAD/ERBIL, Iraq Iraqi army units surged towards the centre of Mosul on Tuesday in an attack from the city’s southeastern edges that could give fresh impetus to the seven-week-old battle for Islamic State’s Iraqi stronghold. Campaign commander Lieutenant General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah was quoted by Iraqi television as saying troops had entered Salam Hospital, less than a […]
Pouncer: Next year the compay plans to demonstrate the drones being launched from a C130 Hercules cargo aircraft.” Illustration:Windhorse Aerospace A UK company is developing lightweight and edible food drones to bring supplies to hard-to-reach areas in times of disaster. The Somerset-based Windhorse Aerospace last week presented its Pouncer design to Priti Patel, the UK’s Secretary of State for International Development. The drone is nine feet wide, […]
If you set out to make a positive investment case for Italy 20 years ago, the best hope was to play down the myriad structural inefficiencies that blighted the corporate sector and argue that this was a good economy burdened by an unworkable state. Now, after years of no growth accompanied by stubbornly high public debt, a positive case looks even harder to make, especially after the […]
By Gavin Jones | ROME ROME Italy could have an election as early as February, a minister in Matteo Renzi’s outgoing government said on Tuesday after speaking with the prime minister. The comments will heighten support for a quick vote as the only way to avoid protracted political limbo in the euro zone’s third largest economy following Sunday’s “No” vote on Renzi’s constitutional reforms. The two largest […]
Albaddad Capital has announced plans to expand its factory space in Dubai to 500,000 sq ft to enable growth in the production of temporary buildings and relief units. Albaddad said in a statement that it expects to triple its growth during the next five years to meet the Emirati market needs and customers’ requirements in the GCC, Africa and Middle East markets, in addition to expanding into […]
By Rinat Harash | KISUFIM, Israel KISUFIM, Israel A battalion of soldiers crawls across the desert sand with assault rifles cocked. It’s a routine exercise, but these are no ordinary troops – they are Arabs who have chosen to fight for the Jewish state. While the vast majority of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are Jews – and nearly all their conflicts have been against Arab nations […]
By Jonathan Cable | LONDON LONDON Britain will most likely leave the European Union having signed a bilateral trade agreement, according to a Reuters poll of economists on Tuesday that also suggested there remains little chance of the country slipping into recession. Since the June 23 decision to leave the EU, Britain’s economy has performed much better than had been previously feared. The Bank of England is […]
Paula Hawkins takes the plunge Into the Water It has been the publishing sensation of the past few years, so it is no surprise that news of the follow-up to Paula Hawkins’s psychological thriller The Girl on the Train made waves this week. Into the Water will be released on May 2 next year, and Hawkins shows no signs of diverting from the successful formula that has […]
By Katy Migiro NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Food rations to more than 400,000 refugees in Kenya have been halved due to severe funding shortages, and existing supplies will run out completely at the end of February, the United Nations said on Tuesday. Kenya hosts 434,000 refugees from 21 countries, mainly from war-torn neighbouring South Sudan and Somalia, in two overcrowded camps on its northern borders. “We […]
Brussels’ lead Brexit negotiator has called for an “orderly withdrawal” of the UK from the EU but warned the government will have less than two years to agree its exit in a tough negotiating timetable set by the bloc. In his first press conference after being appointed as head of the EU’s Article 50 Taskforce, Michel Barnier said it was “too soon to talk about the details” […]
By Stanley White | TOKYO TOKYO Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is arranging to meet Donald Trump about a week after he takes over as U.S. president on Jan. 20, Jiji news service reported on Tuesday. Abe met Trump in New York last month, soon after his election victory, and Jiji said Abe would meet him around Jan. 27. Trump’s inauguration is due on Jan. 20. A […]
InfoComm MEA Opens Today as Region’s Leading A/V Event, Showcasing Holograms, Videoboards, and Audio and Lighting Systems DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – 6 December 2016 Holograms, massive videoboards, and state-of-the-art audio and lighting displays will be among the audiovisual innovations set to make Expo 2020 in Dubai the world’s most technologically advanced event. The UAE is one of the fastest-growing professional audiovisual markets in one of […]
They’re flexible, cheap to produce and simple to make — which is why perovskites are the hottest new material in solar cell design. And now, engineers in Australia have smashed the trendy new compound’s world efficiency record. (via WSJ)
By Kylie MacLellan | LONDON LONDON British Prime Minister Theresa May faces a rebellion among her own lawmakers when parliament debates whether the government should set out its Brexit plan before triggering formal divorce talks with the European Union. May, who plans to kick off the exit process by the end of March next year, has said the government will not give a running commentary on its […]
In interviews with The New York Times, a former Taliban finance minister described how he traveled to Saudi Arabia for years raising money while ostensibly on pilgrimage. The Taliban have also been allowed to raise additional millions by extorting “taxes” by pressing hundreds of thousands of Pashtun guest workers in the kingdom and menacing their families back home, according to Vali Nasr, a former State Department adviser. […]
BAGHDAD Iraqi army units launched a fresh assault in southeast Mosul on Tuesday and a senior commander was quoted as saying an armoured division had advanced to within less than a mile (1.5 km) of the Tigris River running through the city centre. Iraqi television quoted operations commander Lieutenant-General Abdul Ameer Rasheed Yarallah as saying troops had entered the Salam Hospital in the southeastern neighbourhood of Wahda, […]
DUBAI A Saudi court on Tuesday sentenced 15 people to death for spying for Iran, Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television reported. The 15 were among 32 people — comprising 30 Saudi Shi’ite Muslims, one Iranian and an Afghan — who were detained in 2013 on charges of spying for Iran and went on trial in February. There were no immediate details on the outcome of the trial for the […]
